BENGALURU: "They are the only family I had, and now they are gone too. Two years ago, my husband succumbed to illness, and now both my children are gone. I don't want to live," cried Nagamma, a BBMP waste-segregation worker, as she sat on the banks of Kengeri Lake on Tuesday morning. As she watching, emergency personnel scoured the waterbody for the bodies of her two kids, who had slipped into the water and drowned the previous evening.
The bodies of Mahalakshmi (11) and John Srinivas (13) were fished out in the afternoon. The children and their mother had lived just a few steps away from the lake.
On Monday, Mahalakshmi, who was playing with mud outside their house, went to the lake to wash her hands. She slipped and fell into the water. Hearing her cries for help, her brother John to rush to her aid. Tragically, both drowned.
Nagamma, who relocated from Tamil Nadu two years ago, told TOI the children stopped attending school as they were mocked for their mother being a waste segregator. "They would play near the lake and sometimes pluck lotus from it to sell," she said.
The search for the children began immediately after the incident. Fire services, civil defence, and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams arrived at the scene, but efforts to locate the bodies were hindered by darkness and heavy rain, forcing a pause in operations. The search resumed at 5.30am Tuesday, and the boy's body was recovered around 12:55pm.
"We used a borewell camera to search the lake, and around midday, we saw a head surface. We immediately moved closer and retrieved the body," said Gouthum from the civil defence team. The team took a short break before resuming their efforts in the afternoon. By 4.30pm, Mahalakshmi's body was also found floating on the lake's surface.
Police have registered a case of unnatural death based on Nagamma's statement.
The lake, which is said to be 25ft deep at its centre, was swollen because of heavy rainfall, and the children's bodies were found just 5ft apart.